


Warm

by angel_deux



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: 'hey how is this 13k when it's just cave snuggling?', Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cave snuggles, F/M, also gratuitous wolf attacks as an excuse to have some wound-tending, don't worry: no wolves are harmed in the telling of this story, great question! i have no idea, i wrote it and i still can't figure that out, some wolves do some harming but they get away with it, there's only one bed(roll)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:55:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25860916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel_deux/pseuds/angel_deux
Summary: Before the battle against the dead, Jaime volunteers for a routine patrol with Brienne to try and get some time to talk with her about why she has been avoiding him since he arrived at Winterfell. When a storm catches them unexpectedly when they're still far from the castle, they find a cave to hole up in for the night.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 42
Kudos: 263
Collections: Jaime x Brienne Fic Exchange 2020





	Warm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [miera](https://archiveofourown.org/users/miera/gifts).



> Miera had two prompts that I was obsessed with, so after I finished the first one, I decided to see if I could bang out the second one too. It ended up being a lot longer than I expected! 
> 
> Miera's prompt was: Having arrived in Winterfell to fight for the living during the Long Night, Jaime manages to get sent on a patrol before the battle starts with Brienne. They get caught in a storm and the two of them have to take shelter in a small cave. They'll need to share body heat to survive until morning arrives.

There’s something hilarious, Jaime thinks, about the fact that of all the stupid decisions he’s made in his life, it’s this seemingly innocuous one that might get him killed.

Jump into a bearpit unarmed (well…one-armed) and possibly dying from infection? Fine. Charging a dragon? No problem. Fathering three bastards on the wife of an unstable, brutishly proud king? He somehow got away cleanly, and with the woman being his sister as well. Killing a king against his vows? He didn’t even get a scratch for that one.

Going on a routine patrol into the woods around Winterfell? Dead before morning.

“I don’t see what’s so funny about it,” Brienne snaps. She’s annoyed because she’s guilty, because of course she thinks this is all _her_ fault. She’s not even totally wrong. It was _her_ patrol; he just chose to follow her, because he’s an idiot. It was also her choice to split from the rest of the party, sending Podrick and the others back toward Winterfell and keeping only Jaime by her side. It was also her choice to climb to the top of a ridge, insistent that they could get to it and then back again before the clouds turned. Maybe it _is_ her fault, but she already seems upset with herself, so he’s not going to tell her that.

Well, not unless they survive. Then he’ll never shut up about it.

“It’s not _funny._ Just…of all the things I’ve done in my life, this has to be the most banal way to face down death. Surely you agree.”

“Freezing to death.”

“We fought a _bear_.”

“We didn’t fight anything. _I_ fought a bear. You distracted a bear so we could run from it.”

“You’re lucky there’s not a bear here now. I’d let it have you just for that. I saved your life!”

“Oh, please.”

She’s silent, then. Stewing either in annoyance with him or guilt. He can’t tell. He’d rather she be annoyed with him, but he doesn’t know what else to say to keep her focus. Usually it’s easy. He just has to open his mouth and say whatever’s in his head. But he doesn’t have much energy for anything but putting one foot in front of the other, keeping his eyes on her form through the snow.

From time to time, the wind picks up badly enough that he can’t hear what she’s saying, if she’s saying anything at all. He can usually still see her, but occasionally she disappears for a moment or two in the squall, and in those moments he is childishly certain that he’s lost her for good. Pathetic. But the wind always passes, and she’s still just in front of him, as ever. Then he’s not sure why he was so certain she would just disappear. As if the wind could be strong enough to stagger her. It’s laughable. She’s too sturdy for that. Nothing has staggered her as long as he’s known her. Why would it be the _wind_ that would do it?

He follows her as they make their way back down the treacherous ridge. She seems to know where she’s going, for which he is grateful, because he certainly doesn’t. The sun has all but disappeared now, and he knows they aren’t going to make it back tonight. Winterfell’s walls aren’t visible. They’d be the only source of light out here tonight, if they were, but as the sun fades, no light rises in the distance to replace it. Maybe this is what he gets for not paying better attention to where they were going. He trusts Brienne’s judgment, but he should have known better than to follow her blindly; she’s capable of a lot, but no one alive is capable of the kinds of things she expects of herself. There was never going to be a way to get to the ridge and back again before nightfall and the storm made it impossible, and Jaime would have realized that if he wasn’t so busy…well. Doing whatever it was he was doing. _Mooning_ , Tyrion would say, and he would probably be uncomfortably close to right.

That’s also half the reason why Jaime’s even out on this patrol. It was either go with Brienne out into the cold or deal with Tyrion’s shit-eating grin in safety and warmth, and Jaime chose the cold without thinking it through as much as he should have. He’s already spent the past few nights dealing with Tyrion trying to talk around Brienne, trying to make Jaime bring her up on his own, and Jaime didn’t relish the thought of spending another. Those moments where Tyrion’s cleverness become obvious stupidity without a shred of self-awareness are just unbearable. This seemed like the better choice.

It might _still_ be the better choice, actually. Freezing death and all.

“You know, I’m glad I came along,” he shouts, so she can hear him over the wind.

“Shut up,” she shouts back, and he laughs loud enough so she can hear him. She does; she glares back at him to let him know. It does nothing to dampen his spirits.

“We need to find somewhere to hole up and build a fire. We aren’t going to make it back tonight.”

She pretends not to hear him for a few more grueling steps in the deepening snow, but he knows she has. There’s a particular way she sets her shoulders when she knows he has a point. Gods, it’s been so long since he was forced to follow her through the Riverlands, but it’s easy to relearn her. She has changed, just like he has changed, but enough parts of them still resemble the people they were, and he’s glad for it.

Tyrion’s bullshit wouldn’t be half so excruciating if he wasn’t sometimes _right_ , after all.

There are no chains binding Jaime this time, but he trundles along in Brienne’s wake anyway, shielded in some small part from the wind by her armored frame ahead of him. It feels almost like old times, and he must be mad to almost _miss_ it. Those were the last few weeks when he still had his hand, but he doesn’t think it’s his hand that he’s missing most. He doesn’t know what he’s missing. But it’s something.

She veers off course, pulling them back toward the ridge, looking for an outcropping that will shield them enough from the wind. Jaime stops lagging behind, and struggles to catch up so that he can walk beside her, trying not to look like it took as much effort as it did.

_Like she’ll be impressed_ , says a wormy little inner voice that reminds him of Tyrion or perhaps Cersei. Either way: a voice he should stop listening to.

Together they fumble along in the dark until Brienne cries out in triumph. Jaime follows her, and it’s an impossibly lucky chance: not an outcropping, but an actual cave, hidden in the face of the ridge beyond a narrow opening. Brienne leads the way through it, her armor scraping against the rock. There’s just enough light left to illuminate the entrance, but beyond is a mystery. Full darkness. Jaime, regrettably, doesn’t think to make a joke about bears just yet.

Actually, he doesn’t think of bears at all, which is the kind of mistake that gets people killed in the stories, but he and Brienne are uncommonly blessed; while the cave looks and smells like it once held creatures of some kind—whether bears or wolves or fucking direwolves—it’s stale and empty of life now. The winter up north is too desolate for even the predators, apparently. They’ve probably headed south, where the Riverlands should keep them fed, at least, with the corpses that still likely clog the rivers.

He can see why animals used it once: it’s dry and relatively warm, in the immediate moments when they first step out of the storm. The chill will start seeping in eventually, once these first few seconds of bliss are over with, but at least they won’t get any wetter.

Without speaking, both of them feel their way around on the ground, looking for something with which to start a fire. Whatever creature used this as a lair left plenty of detritus behind. Some sticks, though not as much as Jaime would have hoped, but plenty of dried grass and leaves that will help keep the fire alive. Brienne is able to get a small fire going. Not much of one, but it’s enough to stave off the bite of the chill for a little while longer, and enough to light their small sanctuary.

“There’s a wood, straight out that way,” Brienne says, pointing vaguely out into the cold.

“I’ll go,” Jaime replies.

He’ll examine the impulse later, maybe. Or maybe he won’t. Maybe it will just go unacknowledged, quietly understood within himself that he has never liked to be the one left behind and waiting. He would prefer to always be the one to ride out into danger. Leave the warm place and go back out into the cold. He’s exhausted at the thought, and yet it’s worse to think of waiting for Brienne to return, wondering if she’s going to make it back. Cersei always used to complain about it when he rode off to join some campaign or get involved in some fight, and he used to joke that he would rather have her place, but that had been a lie. He never understood how she could do the waiting, and he understood why she resented that she was expected to.

Brienne looks him over, when he speaks. Maybe she wonders why he has spoken so quickly. Maybe she is trying to figure out why he has volunteered. She will reject him outright if she thinks he’s volunteering out of a desire to protect her. But he thinks he would rather have her angry about that than at all guessing the truth: that it’s a suggestion made by a coward who never learned to wait.

“All right,” she says finally. “But hurry.”

She urges him to warm his hand a little by the fire, and she gives him a small axe so that he can more easily chop up the dead branches. He wants to make a joke about how responsible she is, carrying tools just in case she might need them, but he cannot speak around the lump in his throat. The sudden certainty that he is too open and too obvious.

“I’ll keep the light going as long as I can,” she says, and he nods, and he goes back out into the cold.

To say that he quickly regrets his choice would be inaccurate, but there’s a part of him that laments it, at least. Wishes he didn’t hate the idea of waiting quite so much. The wind is howling, and he’s worried about losing his way back. He’s a soldier, and not unused to harsh conditions, but he has been unsettled since arriving in Winterfell, and he still feels this almost breathless uncertainty. Like the first few moons after returning to Kings Landing without his hand, never sure how to do anything that used to be second nature.

Tyrion would blame it all on Brienne, or perhaps would blame it all on the fact that Jaime has left Cersei behind, but Tyrion often thinks too much with his cock and not enough with his heart—he doesn’t understand these things the way he thinks he does. Then again, that’s true about a lot. At least Jaime _knows_ he’s a fool. Tyrion thinks he’s too clever to be caught in the kinds of traps that Jaime has found himself trapped in, and Jaime has never understood him. They have never understood each other, perhaps, despite how they loved each other.

Then again, that’s true of Jaime and Cersei as well, as much as he has hated to admit it. Not a lot else to think about on the road north, though.

He finds the wood quickly, and he has moved in a straight enough line that he’s sure he’ll be able to find the ridge again, and the little crevice in the wall through which the firelight should reach him when he’s close enough. He hacks at a few sad branches with Brienne’s little axe. Gathers more than he needs to, maybe, and cradles them in his useless arm, the slightly curved fingers of his gold hand for once good for something other than badly holding glasses of wine. It’s still cold, and it’s dark, and he fears wolves and wights both, but it’s less frightening, knowing that the cave is waiting for him, and that he and Brienne can easily survive through the night if he’s able to bring back enough wood to keep the fire going.

Once he has his armful, he turns and labors back through the snow. It’s noticeably higher already. Maybe mid-calf where before it had only reached his ankle, and he hates the fucking north. He imagines, sometimes, when he’s cold and miserable and questioning why he’s even here, Cersei laughing somewhere in the balmy south. Mistress of her city, wearing silks even as it grows colder. Sipping wine while standing in windows, which seems to be her only hobby, these days. Deluded into thinking that she’s safe, surrounded by sycophants and enemies, with nothing in between. He’s reached a point where he’s begun to accept that she never understood him, though it’s a difficult thing to admit sometimes. But he knows she would never understand _this_ : what compelled him north. What compelled him to stand with the family whose members could easily justify taking his head and sending it in a box back to Cersei with a few curses scribbled on a piece of parchment.

He still thinks back, every now and then, to the look that was on Cersei’s face when he turned and left her. It wasn’t sadness. It wasn’t heartbreak. It was anger. It was disbelief. It was _how dare you_?

She’d said those words to him before in anger. Anger that often swiftly turned to lust, but lust _usually_ started as anger with Cersei, so that was no surprise. His missteps and crimes to warrant that anger had never been so large as threatening to stand against her plans. They were smaller things that made her flare up and then melt in short order. Like a dance to which they both knew the steps. It hadn’t always been like that between them, but at a certain point it had stopped being anything else. One of those slow slides that Jaime didn’t even realize was happening until he thought to look back at where they had started and try to puzzle out how they got to where they ended up. Even now, he feels a tug south, because he is a fool who never learned when it came to his sister, and still he fears that there is something that will happen to draw him back. At his weakest, he wonders if he made the right choice. Turning on his sister. Leaving their child to her. He _knows_ , when he’s able to be rational, that she would never have let him be a true father to that babe, no matter what she said when she was trying to keep him near. Still. It hurts that to do the right thing, he must also do a thing he finds reprehensible. He thought for so long that he could stand with his family and still be an honorable man. Maybe Tywin made that impossible, but Jaime hadn’t been able to see it until Cersei, which was far more painful.

If only she had listened. If only she had chosen to stand on the side of the living. If only she had the same drive that Jaime does to do the right thing. But that has never been Cersei. Even at his most delusional with love for her, Jaime understood that part of her, at least in part because he was trying to convince himself that it was something they shared, and not something that set them so starkly apart. If she _had_ ended up on this side of things, it would have been a coincidence, and calculated for her own benefit.

He has talked himself in circles since he left. Leaving was what he decided he needed to do to save himself, but the thought seems laughable now. Save himself? Same himself from what? He has always made his choices with open eyes, and he cannot convince even _himself_ that his blinding love for Cersei is anywhere near a good enough excuse. Redeem himself? What would he be redeeming himself from? Loving his sister? Fathering bastards on her? Killing his king? He won’t apologize for any of those things. He won’t apologize for his love or for the things he did for his family. He made the choices that he thought were needed to protect the ones he loved.

And so what else? Why is he here? He cannot undo the damage that the Lannister dynasty has done to the realm in the name of power. He cannot and won’t divorce himself entirely from the fate of his family. And yet there is no other choice for him except being here. His weakest moments aren’t very weak. His longing to be back in Kings Landing is never very strong. He knows there’s nothing for him there anymore.

He could not have stayed there with her. Could not have _waited_ while the war for everything was being fought. Not knowing that his brother would be in the north. Not knowing that _Brienne_ would be in the north, too.

It would all be simpler if he could give it a name. Whether a single word or a short sentence. _Any_ kind of label that would make it make sense. The kind of description that Tyrion has wanted to give it, or the name that Bronn wanted to give it, even. Crass and crude or overly precious, at least it would be something. As it stands, Jaime has no idea, and it has been bothering him since he arrived in Winterfell. He has barely spoken to Brienne for years. A few scant conversations ever since they returned to Kings Landing from Harrenhall and retook their proper places in society. What can she be to him? She’s a memory of a harsher time. A friend made in circumstances he’d rather forget. Maybe it’s not strange that he has carried a bit of her with him. She was there through so much. But it’s ridiculous, the way he finds himself drawn to her now. It’s ridiculous that she can have any effect on his decisions, and yet she has. It wasn’t _just_ her that drove him north. But her words had meant _something_ , and clearly her regard matters to him as well, else he would not have followed her out here into the snow like a madman.

Whatever explanation exists, he doesn’t have the words for it yet. That makes it difficult, and maybe that makes it fascinating, too, in a way that makes it even less escapable. Tyrion said something once that Jaime only half paid attention to. Something about men and puzzles, and how they can’t leave them alone. Maybe that’s what his fascination with Brienne is. _She_ isn’t a puzzle, but the things he feels when he’s around her is. He’s a grown man who can recognize feelings when he has them, but they don’t fit the way he expected them to, and that’s the strange part. To be told your whole life, to _feel_ your whole life, that you are part of a whole. A second half to a person’s soul. Everything neatly sorted away. Jaime loved Tyrion, and he cared for the occasional person that Cersei didn’t, but it was never anything like this. This strange connection between he and Brienne. This experience that Cersei has no part of, and _can’t_ have any part of. It sometimes feels like Brienne has stolen a tiny part of his soul away and has hidden it where Cersei can’t find it and twist it for her own ends. Like being near Brienne reminds him of the man he wishes he could be, and breaks him just a bit out of the mold of the man he has become.

He is not a fool about his love for his sister. When he was younger, maybe he scorned the people who would call it horrid or twisted or unhealthy. _They don’t understand_ , he would think. And if _he_ didn’t quite understand, well, it was because it was like Cersei said: they were divine. They were above the laws of men. It didn’t need to be understood, even by him. But he is older now, and not quite so blind, and not quite so full of senseless love. Maybe it was losing his hand that did it. Allowed him, somehow, to open his eyes, and see her better than he used to. Or maybe it was always going to happen. Or maybe it was Brienne. It’s impossible to say, now, on the outside. The only thing he can be sure of is that he _is_ on the outside.

He wanders back in the direction of the cave, feeling unmoored and lost with only the blinding snow and the black of night in front of him, and it’s just as he has begun to fear that he made a wrong turn that he sees the flickering light that peeks through the entrance to the cave. The storm has picked up since he has been gone, and he wonders briefly if Brienne has been worried for him.

(What a ridiculous, indulgent thought. This kind of shit is why Tyrion says what he says, and why Bronn delighted in implying what he implied when Brienne found the Lannister army at Riverrun.)

“There you are,” Brienne says when he enters the cave. It doesn’t _sound_ like she was worried. He unpleasantly has to make note of that. He drops his bundle of sticks on the ground, and Brienne gets to work on stoking the fire, businesslike and brusque. She has stripped off her armor already, the cold bulk of it piled in the corner, and Jaime imagines Podrick would have probably had it all oiled and neatly packed away by now. Brienne has grown unused to tending to her own things—or maybe, he decides, she was just too busy pacing with worry, hoping that he had not met some unpleasant fate.

She’d carried a pack with her on patrol, and she has unpacked its meagre contents in front of the fire. Jaime takes the time to look them over while he works at unbuckling his armor with his single hand. It’s not much of a pack. Some salt-dried meat. A roughspun bedroll and a single fur that’s been inexpertly turned into a blanket. Still. Anything will help, and he’s glad she brought it.

“Pod insisted on the pack,” she says. She’s looking at his eyeline, daring him to say something. She has looked at him like that for the past few days. Uncertain as to what he wants, but certain he’s up to something, and constantly ready to challenge him for it. He’s sure they parted as friends at Riverrun, and even after the tension at the Dragonpit he thought they still held the same regard. But something has changed between them since then, and he doesn’t know what it is. Her deepening loyalty to the Starks drawing her away, perhaps? She didn’t refuse his company when he expressed a desire to join her patrol, but she _did_ seem suspicious of it, and suspicious of him.

“He’s a good squire,” he says, and she looks at him across the fire, vaguely wounded and ready for something that he isn’t planning on giving her. He manages a smile. “You didn’t want to take him at first, remember.”

“Shut up,” she says, but there’s a hint of a smile in her words, and he’s pleased with himself. Every little bit drawing her out. Reminding her: _we like each other, don’t we?_ They did, once. He still likes her.

“I’m sure he made it back all right,” he says. She frowns. Makes a noncommittal noise. “You’re not sure.”

“He’s dedicated. That can make people foolish when it comes to the people they want to protect.”

“Well, he learned from the best.” Another frown. He sighs at her. “What?”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“No, but you’re looking at me as if you expect me to...”

“To what?”

“I don’t know. Say something cruel. Or do something horrible. You’ve been doing it a lot, lately.”

She doesn’t argue with him, which is a bit of a surprise. Just frowns at him. Looks at him like she’s studying him. It makes him want to look away, but he doesn’t. Finally, she speaks.

“Why did you come on this patrol?”

“ _More_ suspicion. Truly I don’t know what I’ve done to make you think…”

“You were happy enough to spend the other nights drinking in your brother’s rooms. Forgive me if I was surprised to find you volunteered for a patrol you’ve had no previous interest in.”

“What’s interesting about _patrol_? It’s a soldier’s job, and I’m a soldier. I don’t have to be enthusiastic about the prospect, but I didn’t come north to sit and listen to my brother complain about reining in his dragon queen and pretending he’s cleverer than everyone else. If you spent two nights doing that, you’d volunteer to scout the tundra, too.”

“I thought you got along with your brother. He has spoken highly of you, the few times we’ve met.”

“Well, I thought I got along with you, but clearly I was mistaken.”

She frowns again, and she shakes her head. Her hair is wet, in her face, removed from the way she wears it slicked back so tightly. She doesn’t seem to notice or mind the way water drips from the ends, but Jaime watches it. After going back out into the cold and then returning, the smallest details seem larger somehow.

Brienne straightens from the fire, having built it very correctly, ensuring his supply of sticks and small branches lasts as long as possible. It looks a poor haul now that he regards it in the flickering firelight; it seemed heftier when he was actually doing the carrying.

“I can get more,” he offers, and she actually huffs wordlessly at him, like an irritated horse. He can _feel_ his frown getting deeper. “Is that a yes?”

“No. If we need more, _I’ll_ get more.”

Ah, so she has decided that his choice to foray out into the storm _was_ based on a desire to protect her. He supposes he will endure her annoyance for that for a little while.

It brings to mind Cersei again, though he wishes it wouldn’t. He’s been doing such a good job of not thinking about her since he got north, and he wants to keep doing it. Not thinking about her. Not worrying that he made the wrong choice.

He knows he didn’t. That’s the thing. It was the right choice. It’s just also a choice he never would have made before, and it’s difficult sometimes to stomach that. Being awake and desperately trying to fall asleep again, though the sun is in his eyes and making it impossible. It’s too late for him to turn back now. Too late for him to go back to pretending that he doesn’t know what Cersei is capable of. In the past, their separations have only blinded him to everything that was wrong about them when they were together. But not this time. This time, the longer he is away, the more he remembers the things that should have made him put a stop to this sooner.

If only he had…if only _she_ had…It’s impossible to quiet those voices, even though they add nothing new. Tyrion said, the other day, _you’re addicted to martyrdom_ , which sounded like a typically overhanded Tyrion way to say that Jaime occasionally gets a bit overzealous in trying to be a knight from a story—a not-new observance that Tyrion used to trot out when he was a boy and feeling particularly obnoxious. But he wasn’t wrong. Jaime always wants to save people from themselves. Even when they don’t need to be saved. Even when it’s at his own expense.

_People_. He can say it’s about _people_ all he wants, but really it’s about Cersei. He’s had his moments of self-sacrifice for the good of others, of course. Brienne, his soldiers, the population of Kings Landing. But for most of his life, it has been Cersei. Cersei above all others. Cersei to the exclusion of others. He never bothered to ask whether Cersei would do the same for him. It never felt like it was because he knew the answer was _no_. It was more like the answer never mattered to him.

It matters now. Brienne is staring at him across the fire, still stubborn and pigheaded and willing to march out into that cold snow to keep him safe. Oh, sure, clearly her main goal is to prove to both of them that she can do it. She has a streak of that still, even now that she has proved herself to him time and again. He supposes it’s characteristic for men to think you only have to prove yourself the once, and then it speaks for itself. He earned himself a young knighthood, and word of his deeds spread. From time to time he would be challenged. Men love to pick on a stronger target to make themselves look stronger than they are, or perhaps because they genuinely think that they’re stronger than they are. Either way, it wasn’t as if everyone took the word of tales and accepted the Kingslayer’s fighting prowess. Most did, though. He can’t imagine it’s been the same for Brienne. He knows from Cersei that proof is demanded at every turn with women, and for a woman like Brienne, who excels so beautifully in a space that many men believe is theirs…

“I wish you’d stop glaring at me,” he says, and she glares at the fire instead. She used to get very red when she was annoyed with him. Is it just the cold that keeps her from flushing now? Or has she gotten used to him? He would like that, he thinks. If she understood his prodding enough to know that it’s not truly antagonistic. “Ask me what you want to ask me, or yell at me for whatever you wish to yell at me for. It will be a long night if you insist on stubborn silence.”

“We’ve been in here for _minutes_ ,” Brienne points out. There’s an amusement in her tone, but it’s still a wary one, and it makes him feel cagey. Makes him wish for the cold wind again. Maybe he should not have insisted they stop. At least with the wind between them, it would make sense that she would have to be so speechless, and he could pretend it had nothing to do with him.

“I’ve been here for days,” he points out. “And you’ve gotten very good at avoiding me.”

“You assume too much.”

“The first few times I noticed your avoidance, it was an assumption, yes. After that…”

“What would you have me say?”

“Whatever it is you’re not saying.”

She stares at him a little while longer. She reminds him sometimes of himself. Caged in by these conversations and wishing there was some easier action she could take. Something that didn’t involve exposing the delicate parts of herself that she doesn’t want him to see. She would rather not talk about this. It makes him wary to press on. It makes him think that perhaps if she insists, he’ll drop it, and try not to sulk too obviously until morning for having failed.

“I came on patrol because you were avoiding me,” he says.

“And you thought to force the issue.”

“I thought to find a moment of your time, yes. I didn’t think we’d be having this conversation like this.”

“What, in a cave, in the middle of a storm?”

“Well, that. And alone.”

Her mouth twists a little. Incredulity? Annoyance? No, mirth.

“You thought Podrick would serve as a buffer?”

“Podrick. That wildling. Whomever. I thought you might talk more easily if one of them was around.” She starts to open her mouth to say something, but he cuts her off. “You don’t have to tell me I’m wrong. Now that I’ve had all day to think about it, it seems absurd.”

“As long as you’re aware of that,” she says. He sighs. Before he can think of anything else to say, she saves him with, “I didn’t intend to…avoid you.” He waits, half afraid to look at her and make her realize that she does not want to finish her thought. She musters herself and continues, “there is a lot already to contend with. I did not…it seemed easier. To keep to myself.”

“Even when it was clear that I sought your company?”

“I did not think you were.”

He frowns a bit at that, but he doesn’t detect a hint of a lie in her voice.

“I suppose I could have made myself more obvious by chasing you down in the yard in front of everyone.”

“I’m glad you didn’t.”

“So am I. You would have punched me.”

“I would not have,” she says, laughing, almost.

“I can imagine it.”

“You sound like your brother.”

“That might be worse than punching me.”

“ _He_ is always convinced he’s right about everything, too.”

“Believe me, I…that isn’t me,” Jaime says. He does not mean to make his tone as bleak and pathetic as it is, but it comes out that way, and Brienne looks at him with concern. “I have questioned my decisions every day since I left Kings Landing. I suppose you wouldn’t know what that’s like.”

“To question my decisions? I do it constantly.”

“To question your _every_ decision. You always seemed so sure of what you were doing, when we were together before. Never a doubt, no matter how much I tried to make you question yourself.”

“Surely you know there were doubts. You saw them.”

“Eventually, yes. But not at first. And I doubt even now that you would say that you made the wrong choices. Uninformed ones, maybe, but you made the best choices for what you knew at the time.”

“I suppose you’re saying this to explain why you were different.”

“Well done. You at least will admit I have a point.”

“That you have made bad decisions?”

“That I have made very few good.”

“And was this one of them?”

“The patrol? Maybe not. But coming to Winterfell? One of my finest.”

She watches him for a few moments with something that is almost like distaste, and he thinks that she is going to change the subject. She picks up Oathkeeper and begins sharpening its blade. A pointless endeavor, but he likes that she does it. He does the same with Widows Wail. Maybe he’ll tell her that, eventually.

“You brought it up,” she says slowly. “As if you wanted to talk about it. As if you need to tell me about it. You don’t. I understand.”

“How could you? We’ve spoken barely a few sentences to each other in years. You know nothing about what I’ve done in Kings Landing. I know nothing about what you’ve done on your journey to find the Stark girl. We are strangers.”

“You think so?” she asks. Surprised, not judgmental, but he feels the judgement off of her anyway.

“We should be,” he argues, pivoting a bit. She still seems at least a little bit amused, and it’s frustrating, and maybe a little amusing. He _wants_ to laugh about it. He wants to laugh it off, say something pithy about how little they mean to each other. Close the book on this confusion and this unsettling feeling of wanting her close. He doesn’t.

“I did not seek you out,” she says calmly.

“No, you avoided me.” She doesn’t answer that. Just ticks her eyebrows slightly upward, as if to point something out. “And I sought _you_ out,” he guesses, and she tilts her head just slightly to the side in agreement. “Well, you make a fair point.”

“I don’t make any point.”

“You implied one. And it’s not wrong. I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“I have no idea.”

“Well, that clears things up.”

Satisfied that the sword is still just as sharp as it has ever been, she puts it away with a reverence that he cannot help but notice, and dissatisfaction tingles through him. This isn’t how this conversation was supposed to go, though he’s not sure now how he thought it _would_. Now that he’s here, all of this seems like it tracks. He’s never been very good at this. Talking with people. Befriending people. Expressing himself. And Brienne seems even less inclined to do it than he is.

“Don’t you feel it?” he asks, out of desperation, and she looks at him, startled, as if he has yelled.

“What?” she asks. He should have known that she wasn’t going to understand. He has a sick moment of thinking _this is why it’s easier with Cersei. She knows what I’m talking about, at least, even if she pretends not to._

“I don’t know,” he deflects. “I thought…” He realizes quite suddenly that he loathes the idea of saying it aloud. “I don’t know,” he settles on.

_A connection_ , he would say, maybe, if that didn’t sound so utterly pathetic. _Don’t you feel it_? _Don’t you feel drawn to me the way I feel drawn to you?_

He supposes he knows she does. He supposes he can feel it, and see it, in the way she avoids his eye and in the way she has avoided _him_ since he has been here, near her. But if she does not want to speak it aloud, then he won’t speak it either.

* * *

The rest of the night moves with glacial slowness. They eat the salted meat that Podrick packed. It was scarcely meal enough for a single person of her size, let alone two people, one of them just a bit shorter. But Jaime is no stranger to going to sleep with an empty stomach, and he’s just glad that Brienne doesn’t try to do something stupidly noble like giving him a larger portion to keep the old cripple healthy.

When it’s time to sleep, there’s no way around it, and again this is something that Jaime is no stranger to. He hasn’t campaigned in conditions quite this cold before, but quarters are close during war, and it’s no surprising thing to sleep surrounded by your comrades, with their backs pressed up against yours. If not for that nameless _something_ that bothers him like an itch beneath his skin, this would be nothing.

Brienne finally _does_ turn a bit red when she realizes that there’s only one paltry blanket to share for the night.

“One of us should stay up and keep watch,” she says, and he laughs mirthlessly. The cold has seeped steadily into the cave, even with the valiant efforts of Brienne’s small fire, and both of them are too experienced not to know that they’ll freeze to death before morning if it goes out and they both insist on keeping to an imaginary line drawn down the middle of the cave.

“Brienne,” he says.

“There could be wolves,” she insists.

“Or bears.”

“There _could_ be.”

“Nothing’s been here for a long while, and you know it. Too barren for the bears, which tells me we’ve picked a fine place to die tonight. Surely your bloody honor won’t keep you from sharing warmth with a comrade.”

She glares at him distrustfully, as if she thinks he is using his words to back her into a corner, or as if she thinks he means to seduce her with his shitty attitude. He reflexively opens his mouth to say something cruel and prodding, because he knows she’ll believe it. _If it’s your maidenhead you’re worried about, don’t bother. You know I’m not interested_. She’d growl and glare and huff, but she’d make herself comfortable and stop worrying about his intentions. He’d told her years ago that he wasn’t interested, and it had worked then. But he can’t say it. What if she realizes it’s not true anymore?

She gives it up anyway. She’s wordless as she moves across the cave towards him. He has always had an overactive imagination, but he shuts it up through some miracle, refusing to imagine anything other than what’s happening. Refusing to see Tyrion’s smug grin or Bronn’s leering face when she lies down next to him on the spread-open bedroll, her shoulders hunched defensively. It doesn’t take long to banish those thoughts, anyway, with the way she’s curled away from him, trying to make herself smaller, waiting for a blow or a comment or a taunt that’s not going to come. He’s sorry for it. Sorry that he has made her think that she can expect the worst from him. He thought they parted as friends, but apparently not. Or maybe there are some wounds that don’t heal right, and there’s always going to be a little scar tissue, like the thick lines that still cross over his stump. Maybe his rudeness and cruelty toward her at the beginning means that there must always be a shred of doubt in her, no matter what followed.

Or maybe it’s just fucking _awkward_. That possibility comes to him quickly when they’re both lying down in the dark, not quite touching, not facing each other. It’s not like he doesn’t _know_ that this is a shit way to share body heat, and he thinks she knows it too, but neither of them want to be the one to say “you know, this would work a lot better if we were actually touching”, and so it’s just…silence. Gods. Why is he like this? Why is _she_ like this? Why did the gods see fit to thrust _them_ two together if they weren’t also going to give them the skills to fucking communicate?

“This isn’t helping,” he finally says, and she sighs. She sighs the way she does everything else: fully, without abandon. She rolls over to look at him, and in the dim light he can see the way her face is creased with annoyance and a kind of embarrassed agony that he recognizes well. “Put the sword between us if you want, but I need to get closer.”

She laughs at that, unexpectedly. Loud and surprised with herself.

“What?” she asks. It’s his turn to flush red. He can feel the heat of it on his face.

“It’s…I don’t know. To protect your honor,” he says.

“My honor,” she repeats, scathing.

“I don’t know if you thought I was just…”

“I didn’t,” she says, and he realizes that she’s frightened. Not of him, or of his closeness, but of being misunderstood. Of being seen to _want_ something more than what she thinks he’s offering. His throat goes a bit dry at the thought. He feels…young. Suddenly. And not in a good way: in a way where he doesn’t understand anything at all.

“All right,” he says, gentler than he spoke before. He shifts a bit closer, until his back is pressed up against her. She relaxes once she realizes that he has no intention of turning around, and he can feel her sturdiness and her heavy breathing against him, and the instantaneousness of the relief is almost too much for him. Safety. He can say all he wants about soldiers and old habits, but he knows it isn’t just sharing body heat with a comrade that makes him feel like this. Quietly breathless and secure in the knowledge that they can protect each other from anything.

* * *

The fire goes out in the middle of the night. Jaime only knows it because Brienne shifts against him, and wakes him up. Her face is very close to his. He can see only the dimmest outline, but he can see that her eyes are still closed, and he knows that she’s still asleep. They have turned towards each other, their bodies in sleep not feeling the same embarrassment as their bodies when awake, apparently. Even as he lays there, Brienne shifts closer, her hands curled beneath her head in a makeshift pillow, her nose dipping down beneath the fur, closer to his shoulder. He lies there for a moment, allows it. Breathes in and out and imagines that he had made different choices. Left Kings Landing earlier, perhaps. Did not damage Brienne’s regard for him so much that she would treat him with so much suspicion when he eventually did.

It’s cold. Colder than he expected. He sits up and sees that Brienne must have gotten up at some point to set the last of the sticks on the fire, because there are no more. Just a pile of embers in the middle of the cave

He thinks of waking Brienne, because that would be the sensible thing to do, but then he doesn’t, because he has never done the sensible thing when he can instead do the reckless, silly thing. He fumbles around in the dark for his sword and somehow manages not to wake her. He clumsily pulls the fur up over her shoulders, trying not to think about it as anything intimate, or caring, or _anything_ but a kind gesture from one soldier to another.

He slips out quietly into the night. Unburdened by his armor, he feels lighter and more able to navigate the snowy plain ahead of him, but unprotected and vulnerable in a way he isn’t quite used to. It would only slow him down, and the sound would wake Brienne, but he never feels quite right, existing out in the world without armor to protect him.

The snow has lessened, and the wind is gone. It’s just small flakes spiraling down from the sky. The moon cuts through the clouds in a few places, giving him ample light, and he can make out the gnarled gray trees that he had to stumble across earlier in the night. Brienne’s little axe makes quick work of some more branches, and he’s moving much more quickly than he was the last time he came out here, and he isn’t thinking about Cersei or the thorny situation he’s in or even the upcoming battle against the wights and the Night King.

He also isn’t thinking about wolves. At least, not until he turns and sees one standing far too close to him, just on top of a small swell of snow.

It’s not ideal. Not ideal because it’s a fucking wolf and he’s alone in the middle of the night in its territory. Not ideal because he’s a one-handed man with an armful of sticks that are supposed to help him and Brienne survive the night. Not ideal because he’s still drowsy with sleep. Rapidly coming out of it thanks to the adrenaline of suddenly facing down a wolf, but it’s slower to release him than he would like.

“At least it’ll amuse the Starks, if they ever find my body,” he says aloud, in a tone he hopes is friendly. The wolf tilts its head at him. “Good dog,” he tries, but that doesn’t help. The wolf jumps down from the small hill, showing off, stalking closer and around. Jaime’s had thankfully limited interactions with wolves in his life, but he understands; it’s stalking him.

He supposes, from the point of view of a wolf, he must present a tempting picture. An old, lame, pathetic creature, cut off from the rest of his herd. For a wolf that probably hasn’t had much game to hunt, between the dragons and the soldiers in Winterfell, Jaime must seem like some kind of gift from whatever gods wolves worship. It circles him, taking him in. Jaime knows it’s death to fall prey to its gaze, knows that the rest of its pack must be close, and that they could at this very moment be circling around behind him. Wolves hunt in packs. Everyone knows that. It’s why they made such an effective sigil for the Starks and their seemingly endless brood, before they were culled somewhat.

Though, well, at least he’s not facing a direwolf. He did that once, and he would rather not do it again. At least Robb Stark’s wolf had been easily brought to heel by its master. The kind of creatures that are hunting this close to Winterfell, not scared off by the dragons or by the presence of Snow’s great Ghost, they’re not the kinds of creatures Jaime will be able to scare off on his own.

He backs away, still holding his armful of sticks. He has his hand outstretched as if to ward the beast off. He wants to draw his sword, but the creature’s eyes seem too intelligent, and he imagines that if he reaches for his blade, it will strike. It’s close enough now that it could latch onto his arm. Spring up on its powerful legs and knock him back into the snow, and then there would be no fighting it.

In the distance, though not nearly as far as he’d like, he can hear the howling of the other beasts as they get closer. His wolf throws its head back to join in, calling the others, and Jaime curses and draws his sword and somehow, instinctively, knows to drop his armful of branches and raise his maimed arm. The wolf is already on him, its howl cut short, morphing into a snarl and a growl that sounds louder, somehow, than the call meant to draw more wolves to help rip Jaime apart.

He’s lucky; the wolf seems experienced in fighting men, as it aims for Jaime’s throat, but clamps its jaws around his hand when he brings the heavy golden weight up to block it. It must know how useless men are without their hands. Its teeth make a horrible clacking sound when it tries to drive its fangs through his skin, and it yelps rather like a kicked dog, in a way Jaime feels strangely guilty about.

“Well, that’s what you get,” he says savagely to it, and he yanks his hand back as the wolf retreats a few feet, opening and closing its mouth as if trying to get rid of the taste, its tail between its legs. Jaime tries to back away, hoping that the wolf will have decided that he isn’t worth it, but the thing is desperate, and hungry. Jaime can see the way its ribs show through its fur. It won’t be scared off so easily by something as startling as a bit of metal where flesh was supposed to be.

He spins in time to see the second wolf arriving through the snow, and spins again when he hears the third. They could take him down easily if they all charged together, and he thinks they know that, but they hesitate, likely knowing that he’d take a few down with him if they tried. They know the sight of steel, apparently.

A few feint forward, but he holds them back with his sword, spinning and shouting at them, startling them badly enough that they back off, waiting for him to tire out, waiting for him to drop his guard enough so that one of them can run up and take him down. The moon is out, but the light is not good enough that he feels confident of holding them off forever. Even if it was full daylight, all it would take is one slip. One mistake. They’re watchful for it, and hungry, and if they decide to say _fuck the danger_ and attack him together, they’ll kill him for sure.

One runs by him, bites at the back of his leg hard enough to draw blood, but not enough to bring him down. He whirls on it, backing away, keeping his sword between him and the rest of the wolves as best as he can, though now that they smell blood, they’re even less likely to regard him as a true threat.

It’s not that he forgets that Brienne is within shouting distance. It’s just that he forgets _everything_. Everything but this clearing, and these wolves, and this moment. It’s a survival instinct to push everything away, and so when she charges out of the darkness, a tall, pale shadow, there are at least three full seconds where he thinks she’s a wight, before his mind starts working again.

She looks smaller without her armor. He hadn’t noticed in the cave, because it was small enough to make her seem still half a giant, but she does not look so untouchable or steady out here. It’s not quite the pink dress of Harrenhall, but it has been a long while since he has seen her and thought: _vunerable._

She shouts to try and scare the wolves off, and she blocks one of them from lunging, but the wolves are truly worked up now, and the attacks come more heavily. He hears her cry out once, twice. His own arm is bitten when he tries to get his sword up to protect her. One of the wolves finally manages to knock him down, and he’s sure it will go for his throat, but it ends up trying to mangle his already-missing hand, and he’s able to push it off him.

There’s more howling in the distance, and for a second, Jaime is certain that there are going to be _more_ wolves arriving to tear them to pieces, and he feels a sinking certainty that they won’t survive it. But the wolves begin to dart away instead. First one, then another. One takes a parting nip at him before it goes, and he curses after it, giddy enough with relief to be almost amused by it. Brienne is still standing, her sword clutched in her hand. It isn’t even red with blood.

“Bested by a couple of wolves,” he manages to say, shakily, still sitting on the ground, the wet snow seeping into his clothes and managing to do away with the last of the haze of battle. “What do you think scared them off?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t think we want to meet it,” Brienne says, and Jaime huffs agreement. He tries to stand and finds that his leg is less willing to cooperate than he’d expected. The blood on the back of his thigh is warm, but cooling quickly against the ground, and he wonders vaguely if it’s worse than it felt at first. These wounds often are. Even his hand had not hurt in those first seconds after the blade came down.

Brienne is there, holding out a hand for him. Blood swirls down into her palm, and he can see several bites on her wrist, bleeding sluggishly. His eyes go straight to them, but she does not let him linger. She shakes her hand in front of him, annoyed, and he takes it. She pulls him up, wincing as she does.

“You’re hurt,” he says.

“So are you,” she fires back.

He staggers against her when he tries to take a step, and he tries to look behind him. Of course he can’t see the wound where the wolf tore into him, but it’s growing more painful, now. Unexpectedly. The red in the snow is everywhere, from both of them combined. He can see another bite on her hip; her white shirt is torn and bloodied.

He wants to stop and take stock of everything, but there’s no time. The cave will at least be more defensible if the wolves come back, and it will have fire. Jaime bends down, trying to ignore the worrying pull of his muscles, to get his dropped sticks. Brienne helps him, not arguing or telling him it’s worthless. He finds he’s more worried about that. He’s used to her arguing about every choice he makes.

The light from the fire no longer guides them the way it guided him when he was on his way back the first time, but the moonlight is enough. The wolves howl again, in the distance, and it feels like they might be taunting Jaime and Brienne, or trying to draw them out, and either way it makes their escape feel temporary until they are finally back inside the cave. Brienne winces when she brushes up against the narrow stone gap, and he watches her, and stumbles, and together they make a poor entrance into their little temporary home, all tangled limbs, nearly falling on the smoldering embers just by the entrance.

He would laugh if he wasn’t so tired, and so cold, and so miserable now that the adrenaline has faded and left him shaky. He drops his half of the sticks on the ground, and Brienne goes about rebuilding the fire. Her fingers are bone-white from the cold, but she seems to be performing her work competently enough, so he leaves her to it. He goes to her pack, knowing that there must be _something_ for their injuries. Pod wouldn’t have packed a whole bag just to leave out medical supplies, would he?

No, of course not. It’s the only stuff remaining in the bag, because they didn’t need it when Brienne was unpacking the first time. Strips of cloth for binding, thread for stitching, even some boiled wine and a strong-smelling poultice that will hopefully stave off infection. He has seen dog bites go bad before, and he has to imagine wolf bites are even worse.

He moves to the fire. Brienne has lifted her shirt to look at the wound on her side, and Jaime is relieved to see that it’s relatively shallow. Claw-marks rather than the tooth punctures he had imagined. Her arm was clearly bitten, and he can see that the punctures are rather deep, but he is less frightened of them than he was when he could barely see them in the moonlight. Still, he is shaken, and he feels a trembling in his hands that he hates when he goes down on one knee beside her, the supplies held in his hand.

“I can do it,” she says.

“Don’t be daft,” he replies, and she doesn’t argue again. She lifts her shirt higher, giving him access to it. He warms the wine by the fire and tries not to look too obviously affected when she flinches and hisses when he pours a little onto the wound. The smell of the poultice makes her wrinkle her nose, but she doesn’t complain about that, either. She doesn’t complain about any of it, and Jaime feels like he is the only one at all bothered by what happened.

When her hip is finished, he takes her arm, and she flinches and yanks it back, injured and confused.

“What about you?” she asks.

“Your arm needs treating, then me,” he says.

“You’re bleeding quite a bit.”

“So are you.”

She glares at him, but there’s something less bullish in it than there usually is with her. Something delicate and wounded, as if he has found some secret on her skin that he will judge her for. What does she think? Does she think that he judges her for being able to be injured? Does she think that he thinks her weak because a wolf has torn her skin while she was saving him? He doesn’t understand.

“Brienne,” he says. “Let me.”

She nods and extends her arm a little more, though she still looks displeased in a way he doesn’t understand. Her eyes roam over his face while he works. He can feel them, though he does not want to raise his eyes to hers, like he knows he’ll frighten her off if he does.

It isn’t easy to clean a wound with only one hand, but he manages well enough. She helps him when he needs her to, and he doesn’t have to ask, or point it out, and he feels that that means something to him, though he isn’t exactly sure what. When he lingers too long, too gently, he happens to catch her eyes, and she’s looking at him with something exhausted and half hopeful, and it occurs to him that maybe she’s glad that he’s alive.

“I suppose you thought you owed me one for the bear,” he says, because he has never met a moment he could not relieve seriousness from. Brienne’s lips quirk up just a bit; if he wasn’t sitting so close to her, he’s not sure he would even see it as a smile.

“I told you. You never fought the bear.”

“Your blade was unbloodied. You didn’t fight the wolves. I’d still say you saved me.”

“Mm,” she concedes. “Well. I gave them a bigger target to aim for.”

“Right,” Jaime laughs. His thumb brushes over the edge of her wound as he looks down at it, as if he’s looking to make sure it’s clean. Really, he just needs a moment. “I think this one may need to be stitched. I’ll need your help.”

“All right,” she says.

She doesn’t complain when they work together to stitch her skin. Not that he expected much in the way of it, but he expected _something_. Some annoyance or rudeness. Instead, she stays quiet, and again there is this tiny hope within him: _she was worried. You frightened her_.

“I thought I’d go out and get some wood for us,” he says, replying to whatever it is that she’s not saying. Taking a guess. “It would have been quite noble of me if I had pulled it off.”

“Well, you didn’t,” she points out. His thumb is again just on the inside of the skin of her wrist, pressing lightly down, just hard enough to feel her pulse. It’s faint, here, but wild and delicate, like some kind of trapped bird, or a small kitten. He releases her hand, and he washes his own in some of the remaining boiled wine before he takes a long strip of linen and reaches for her hand again. She hesitates before giving it back. Like she wants to rescind her permission to touch her. Like she’s afraid of his touch, suddenly.

It’s all adding up to something in his head. The way she’s looking at him. The way she charged to his defense so angrily. It was true what he was thinking to himself, earlier, when he was angry for following her and angry for not understanding what they are to each other: they do not know each other with the kind of intimacy of old friends or old lovers. In the whole of their lives, they have known each other for so little time. Months as reluctant comrades, eventual friends. A few conversations. The impact she has had on him is difficult to describe, but as a unit, as two people, they have had so little time together, and he never quite understands how to think of it.

He thinks he’s beginning to understand now. The worry in her eyes. The care in her eyes. It’s easier to see from this close, or maybe it’s just that it’s easier to see because she cannot control herself for these few moments. Fear, or adrenaline, or the same sleepy contentment banishing itself and turning to terror that happened to him out in the snow. She _was_ worried for him. She _had_ feared for him. He knows it, and sees it, and understands it, and it nearly freezes him in place after he ties off the bandage at her wrist and then just holds it, her hand balanced on his knee. Her skin is warm where it touches his, and pale except where it is stained with blood, and Jaime thinks that there is no one he would rather be with in this cave than her, and there is no one he would have rather seen out in the snow. No one he would trust more to have his back. No one he wishes to sit by this fire with more.

It’s not quite a name to his feelings, or an explanation for them, but it’s a clarity he had not had all during his long ride north and those days trying to get her to stop running from him. And when he looks at her in this light, he can see everything on her face that she tried to hide before.

He knows the doubts will come creeping back. They always do. He can try to hold on to this feeling as long as he can, but Brienne is difficult to read when she wants to be. When she is able to put herself back into the box that she survives in, he knows that it will be easier to talk himself out of it. For this one, frozen moment, that seems such a horrible thing. He does not want to trade this certainty about himself, and he does not want to trade this certainly about Brienne.

“Now you,” she says, and he grimaces.

The bite is just above the back of his knee, so it could be in a worse position, but not much of one. He tries to be as polite and businesslike as possible in stripping down to his smallclothes so Brienne can see it, but there’s really no way to avoid the awkwardness of it. Brienne hums a little as she crouches down to look at it, and he wonders if she’s blushing, and he wonders if she’s more affected than she’s acting, and he wonders when he became such an exhausted fucking cliché. He can imagine Bronn leering at him, and Tyrion laughing at him, and Cersei sneering at him, and if anything, he should use this time to reflect on the fact that he needs better friends, if _those_ three are the first people who come to mind.

None of them are here, though, in this cave. There’s no audience but Brienne, and she just charged out into the snow to save him from wolves.

This would probably be easier if he were to lie down, but he can’t think of anything more humiliating, so he stays standing, and he keeps asking her asinine questions as she cleans the wound with steady fingers that don’t seem to shake nearly as much as his did. She answers him patiently, with her patented amusement disguised as annoyance. _How_ is he still shaking? How is she not? She does not stitch his wound, though she says she wants to, and she tells him sternly several times that he’s going to be seeing the maester as soon as they get back to Winterfell.

“I’m no stranger to infection, remember,” he tells her, sort of jaunty to compensate for the fact that every time she reaches between his legs to wrap more of the bandage, it nearly makes his mind go blank. “I’m sure you remember the smell of it nearly as well as I do. I’m not eager to repeat the experience.”

“Good,” she says. She’s much more brusque than he was. She does not linger over the bandages or touch them too long or try to make eye contact with him. That would be more difficult, given where the injury is, but still. When he turns and looks at her, she is still down on one knee behind him, and she rises to her feet until she returns to her proper place, standing just taller than him, and very close.

“Thank you,” he says.

“Of course. You did the same for me.”

“I mean thank you for rescuing me. I would have been killed if you hadn’t been there.”

“You wouldn’t have been out in this storm at all if not for me,” she reminds him, deflecting, but for some reason he doesn’t want to hear that.

“I made the choice to follow you. I made the choice to follow you even when the storm picked up. You don’t owe me anything, and you know that.”

Stubbornly, she tilts her head at him.

“It was a poor choice,” she says.

“Perhaps, but I’m glad I was here. Otherwise you might have been the one eaten by wolves while trying to gather wood in a storm. Though I suppose you’ll try to tell me you’d never do something so stupid.”

She allows a half smile at that.

“I’d have at least woken up whoever was with me.”

“I thought I’d let you sleep.”

“Yes, and you were nearly eaten by wolves. See how that works?”

“It would have been a nice surprise if it had been slightly warmer when you woke, though, wouldn’t it?”

“And a nice surprise if the fire went out entirely, and I woke to find you disappeared.”

“You’d probably just assume I’d fucked off back to Winterfell. Got bored or something.”

She frowns at that, and moves farther away, putting some more sticks on the fire.

“Get warm. And get dressed,” she tells him. He does, annoyed and embarrassed about it. She sits with her back against the rocks near the back of the cave, to better see the entrance in case the wolves try to follow them in. Jaime doesn’t think they will, but he takes up the position beside her anyway, just barely close enough that their shoulders touch. He pulls the blanket over them both, covering their legs, trying to be gentle and trying not to be _too_ gentle, all at once. She passes him his sword, taking it out of the belt where he’d dropped it on her other side. He takes it with a murmured thanks, and then there’s silence, broken only by the quiet crackle of sticks. Jaime wants to close his eyes and sleep until morning. He keeps imagining the moment behind his eyelids when he realized that Brienne had arrived to save him. _Was this what she felt when I jumped into the bear pit_? Had it felt like that? Like it was a stupid, foolish thing to do, and like it somehow was also the most amazing thing anyone had ever done for him?

He hadn’t had the time to think of it when it was happening, but now he can’t seem to stop. She looked marvelous, charging out from between the trees. Stopping the attack. Marvelous and strong and _vulnerable._ She was bitten trying to help him. Could have died trying to help him. And yet she helped him anyway. That stirs something within him. Some nameless want. It’s not the aftermath of the battle getting his blood up. He’s too cold and tired for it to be that. But the act of being protected. The fact that someone _wanted_ to protect him. The fact that it was _Brienne_. He still can’t name it. Not really. But it’s _there_.

“You’re freezing,” she tells him, and he looks at her. Concern, naked in her expression. He supposes he _is_ cold, but he’s warming up, and he tells her that. She shakes her head. “Not quick enough,” she says.

“You were just worried about me,” he says smugly. “And you’re not convinced I’m all right, yet. That’s all it is.”

“Oh, is _that_ it?” Brienne asks.

“Would you deny it?”

He asks it more seriously than he meant to, and he can see from her expression that she immediately understands. She understands in the same way _he_ understands. This brief moment of perfect understanding between them both, when she knows exactly why he came on this patrol, and maybe understands why he came to Winterfell. This moment when he understands exactly what she must have felt when she woke alone and heard the wolves outside the cave. When he understands why she was so angry with him at the dragon pit. What she expected of him. What she _wanted_ of him.

“No,” she says. Startled by her own words. She looks down at her hands, clenched in her lap. He reaches his own out, wraps his fingers around hers. She hisses, but doesn’t pull her hands away. “Freezing,” she tells him. Her voice is too low beneath the crackling fire, but he makes it out somehow anyway.

_I came to Winterfell because of you_ would have been a simple enough thing to say to her when they were speaking in the courtyard, that first day. It was the first thing that came to mind. The first thing he almost said. But he’d thought, at the time, that it was too ridiculous, and probably not correct. There was more to it than Brienne. The fact that she inspired him, maybe. The fact that she was the one who reminded him that it was bigger than houses and legacies. There were a few ways that _I came to Winterfell because of you_ were true, but he couldn’t _say_ that, because it didn’t explain it well enough, and he wanted her to understand.

Maybe the problem all along was that it was too close to getting to the heart of something too true, and he wasn’t ready to think about it. On the surface it still makes so little sense. But when he looks at her, he can feel a tug on his heart, in his gut, on every part of him. Wanting to be where she is. It hasn’t faded in all the time they’ve been apart. It gets smaller when she’s gone. Less invasive. Easier to live with. But always there’s that sense at the back of his mind like something is missing, and he’s sure now that that something is _her_. He caught a glimpse of something when they were stuck together in the Riverlands, and ever since that hint has haunted him, because he knows it for the possibility that it is.

“I came on the patrol because I wanted to spend time with you,” he tells her. “I came north because you made me want to fight. I survived losing my hand because you goaded me into it, and made me think it was worth it.”

“Jaime,” she says, just plain _Jaime_ , which must mean that she is surprised. He knows that his smile is helpless. It feels it on his face.

“Brienne,” he says, not quite mocking. She stares at him still. “I wouldn’t say those things if they weren’t true.”

She regards him carefully, like she’s examining him for flaws. The same way she looks down at the sword when she sharpens it, knowing it doesn’t need to be sharpened, knowing it will never dull but sharpening it anyway. She looks at him the same way, and he doesn’t know what it means, but it knows what her answer will be before she says it.

“No,” she says. “You wouldn’t.”

Her tone holds an understanding that if one thing is true, then the other must be as well: he would not tell her these things if they weren’t true, and therefore they _must_ be. He finds he likes the wary way she regards him. It’s not so different from the suspicion that drove him wild earlier in the night, but it _feels_ different. It feels more…wondering. Less suspicious. Less angry. More certain and secure. It isn’t that she doesn’t believe him. It’s that she doesn’t fully understand why, and that’s entirely fair. He doesn’t understand why either.

“You saved my life,” he says, again, because he cannot stop thinking about it. “But I wanted to spend time with you before that.”

“You did,” she says. Accepting.

There does not seem to be much more to say after that, and Jaime is glad that neither of them try to fill the silence. He has never been good at staying quiet. He has always preferred to say what he’s thinking. He’s never seen the point in keeping anything wrapped up tight. Cersei used to hate that about him, and now that he has seen her more clearly, it makes sense: she was always hiding, even from him. Of course she found it annoying when he spoke his love and affection and was so obviously sincere about it. Did she even believe him? Or did she suspect that he was playing the same games she was? It’s hard to say. Something tells him that she would not have believed him capable of that kind of deception.

She would have been right, probably, but it still stings to think about.

All of that seems very far away, though. The longer this night drags, the more time he spends here in Brienne’s company, the further away Kings Landing seems. The guilt that has been dogging him and dragging at his heels like, well, like a pack of snapping wolves, it has faded some. He feels steadier. More even-keeled. He needed this. Maybe not the wolf attack, but…well. He can’t deny its effects. Brienne is looking at him with an openness he’s never seen on her before. She’s sitting beside him, not trying to move away. Maybe these are small things. Things a man his age should not cling to like a green boy newly discovering what he’s interested in. But Jaime has never done things in the proper order before, and he is too contented to think it very strange to do things in this order now.

They sit there like that for a long time beside one another, her hand in his. Jaime doesn’t remember falling asleep, but when he wakes his head is tucked against Brienne’s shoulder, and her head rests atop his. She still holds Oathkeeper in her lap. It’s the first thing he sees when he opens his eyes, and he doesn’t want to move, because she is warm against his side, and he can feel her deep breathing under his ear, and he knows that she is still asleep.

It would be better to wake up beside her in a bed, perhaps, but last night’s revelations don’t feel like they have disappeared too quickly into nothing, so he doesn’t mind the hard stone floor or the cold still chilling him. She draped most of the fur over him in the night, it seems, and relied on his body heat to keep herself warm, and there is something about that tenderness that makes him feel lightheaded, almost. Lighthearted, maybe, but more than that. Like he has walked a very long way and finally finds that he can rest, and the relief is almost a physical force.

He must stir somewhat, or make some noise, because Brienne wakes not long after him, and he pretends to wake with her. She isn’t sour or annoyed with him, as he had half-feared she would be. She looks him over, allowing a moment of anxiousness, and then nods. Satisfied.

“I was worried. You’d lost a lot of blood,” she says. “You were chilled, in your sleep.”

“I didn’t intend to sleep,” he confesses. She nods. There is a flush there, in her cheeks, and he almost smiles to see it.

“Neither did I,” she says. She stands up, not groaning nearly as much as he’s about to, which makes _him_ a bit sour, though he hides it. “We should get back. We’re lucky the wolves didn’t come to finish us off.”

“Or whatever scared them away,” Jaime says. He manages to get to his feet without too much dramatic staggering, and he is pleased when he notices Brienne watching him. _I was worried,_ she had said, openly admitting.

“A bear, perhaps,” Brienne says. Her tone is light enough that he’s sure she’s actually making a joke on purpose, and so he laughs at it, which makes her smile.

“I should check your wounds,” he says, but she shakes her head.

“We should get back,” she replies. And so he is denied another excuse to touch her, but he doesn’t much mind. _Something_ feels changed between them. He should not be too greedy and demand it all at once.

His head is clearer as he follows Brienne out into the snow, and as they head back towards Winterfell. Their blood from the wolf attack is gone, covered up by new snow in the night, and there are no signs of anything that happened. But he breathes deeper, and the crispness of the air is almost a pleasure, rather than an annoyance. The guilt he has been carrying is gone, washed away, or burned away, or torn out of him by ravenous teeth, or maybe warmed out of him in his sleep. He feels freer than he ever has, and steadier, too. Like he understands better now what he has to do in the days ahead. Maybe it’s just the fresh air and the sunlight, but he doesn’t think so. Something is different now. Something has changed.

Brienne turns back to make sure he’s still behind her, and she smiles when she sees him watching. He smiles back, and he keeps following.

**Author's Note:**

> if you're wondering if this is supposed to be canon compliant or if Jaime's cave snuggles were somehow powerful enough to prevent him from going back to Kings Landing: the cave snuggles were JUST THAT POWERFUL. I was going to write an epilogue where they go back and go looking for the cave again after the wars are done, but I couldn't get the tone right, and I gave up. But. Happy ending implied!


End file.
